Brooklyn, NY

Check out Smorgasburg Saturday, it's an open air food market in Williamsburg.

Roberta's for pizza.

I'm not a huge Manhattan fan, but I really enjoy Brooklyn.

Spend most of my time in Greenpoint and Williamsburg. If price isn't an issue, Williamsburg has nice hotels with rooftops. Otherwise, check out downtown Brooklyn. Anyway, some ideas in the aforementioned neighborhoods:

- Other Half's taproom in Domino Park is beautiful. Draft selection lacks from Centre Street, but hard to beat its location. Torst is a craft beer bar across McCarren Park in Greenpoint. Head next door to The Hidden Pearl for cocktails. The Buttery also has a good craft beer selection. Talea is a women-owned brewery that makes solid enough beer.

- My two favorite rooftops are Water Tower at Williamsburg Hotel and Westlight at William Vale. I prefer Williamsburg - better music.

- For breakfast, Angels Cafe makes fantastic bagel sandwiches and Cafe Mogador has a good Moroccan breakfast. Coffee is endless in Williamsburg, but I like Butler and Copper Mug (to sit outside and work).

- L'Industrie is pretty easily my favorite slice, maybe in New York.

- Maison Premiere for cocktails/oysters is my go-to. Easy to destroy your wallet, but about as good as it gets anywhere.

- For pub/tavern food, check out all of Allswell, The Bedford and The Gibson. I prefer Allswell.

- Lilia is good Italian, but a difficult table. Short walk is Bamonte's - preferred, for sure.

- So, so many cocktail bars. Fresh Kills Bar is well known in Williamsburg, but there's quite a few along Manhattan Ave in Greenpoint.

Many other places, but this should be a start. Honestly, I don't spend much time outside of these two neighborhoods and West Village. Dad lives in Brooklyn and sister in West Village.

Friend,

Brooklyn is huge. It is also easy to navigate by subway. The best pizzerias in Brooklyn in my opinion are:

Greenwood Heights:
Luigi’s is solid, not great. Gio is a page from the past and a super sweet guy. It had gotten very popular to eat there, but five years ago he had plenty of time to sit and chat with customers.

Carroll Gardens:
Lucali is one of the best pizzerias in the world. It requires a long wait to eat there unless you are a celebrity. Mother and I were blessed by a dear friend, Andrew Bellucci, who died yesterday. Mr. Bellucci is good friends with Mark and called him for us. Mark let us come straight in and personally made our pizzas and ate it with us on his back patio. An amazing experience. It is arguably the best pizza in America.

Williamsburg:
L’industrie is better than Best Pizza, Williamsburg Pizza, and Leo. But it isn’t the best in Brooklyn. Massimo is a nice guy, and his crust is top notch, but I think he does not put enough sauce on his pizzas. And for that reason, most people recommend you get his burrata, because it balances the dearth of sauce.

Greenpoint:
Paulie Gee is starting to feel like a tourist trap. And when his branch in NOLA suddenly closed last month, that could have been seen as a red flag. But that closure spoke more about how NOLA does not appreciate good pizza. Paulie Gee’s slice shop is outstanding.

Dumbo:
Julianna or Grimaldi’s. Locals will tell you to go to Julianna because it is the “real” Grimaldis now, but they serve essentially the same pie. Because there are so many Grimaldi’s throughout America now, I see no reason to go to either unless you’re there and don’t want to go a short distance for better pizza.

Bensonhurst:
JV is IMO the best slice shop in all of Brooklyn. It’s a ways from things, but Vito is the nicest pizza man in Brooklyn and that’s saying something. His pizzas are outstanding, either regular slices or Sicilian style.

Some will steer you to L&B, but I find their Sicilian slices too mushy. L&B is not bad by any stretch, but J&V is much better.

Sheepshead Bay:
Lucia’s of Avenue X is a real locals pizza slice shop. Excellent and you won’t find any tourists here. This is way south almost to Coney Island, so might as well also visit JV, L&B, and Totonno’s.

Coney Island:
Totonno’s is one of the big three in terms of historic pizzerias of NY with John’s of Bleecker St and Patsy’s of the Upper East Side. It just reopened. The service is terrible, but the pizzas used to be great. I have not been back since they reopened.

I probably have missed a few neighborhoods, and I apologize for it. I am not a big fan of Roberta’s. I know they popularized Neapolitan style in NY, but Manhattan has no less than five better Neapolitan style pizzerias now. And when in Brooklyn you should eat Brooklyn style IMO. I wanted to like Bamonte’s, but quickly realized New Orleans has twenty better Italian restaurants than it. It’s a short walk from equally overrated Best Pizza.

Visit some of the many beautiful churches while in Brooklyn.

Yours,
TulaneLSU

Friend,

My senior year of high school was spent not far from NY. On weekends, I would travel alone to NY to explore. Before exploring I would also do as much research on the places I would visit. This was the early 2000s before much was on the internet, so most of what I learned about these neighborhoods was historical backdrop, which in retrospect was quite helpful, more so than the superficial knowledge one picks up from the internet today.

Along the journey on those weekends, I simply paid attention, asked questions, and took notes. I think most people who do the same can develop a similar knowledge. Paying attention to one’s surroundings quickly fills the mind with knowledge of those surroundings.

Those weekend trips form the backbone of my NY pizza knowledge, but Mother and I also visit NY at least once each year. It is such a marvelous city I am amused when some on TD pretend that it is a lost cause, hardly understanding that if NY goes, America goes with it.

Yours,
TulaneLSU